Green Line riders will get 26 stations when the refurbished rail
route reopens in 1996, two more than originally proposed, under a
measure approved Friday by the Chicago Transit Authority board.

Heeding the pleas of community leaders and customers, the board
agreed to add a stop at Laramie
Avenue on the West Side and at 63rd Street and Harvard
Avenue on the South Side.

CTA President Robert Belcaster said he hopes to tap a special
federal fund earmarked for projects that reduce air pollution to help
pay for the 63rd Street
facility, where a park-and- ride lot is planned, and he plans to
economize at other stations to finance Laramie.

CTA officials do not expect the addition of the two stations to
increase the $65 million budgeted for Green Line station
rehabilitation and construction.

But the board approved a measure to increase the entire project's
$300 million budget by $20 million due largely to the unexpectedly
high cost of stripping paint from structural steel on the route and
then recoating it.

More than half of the $20 million will be covered by portions of
grants for other CTA projects that proved not to be needed, staff
officials said.

Much of the rest will be transferred to the Green Line
reconstruction from non-critical projects elsewhere on the system
that have been postponed. For example, a planned rehab of the
95th Street station on the Dan
Ryan Red Line will be put off, officials said, freeing $2.3
million.

Board members have voiced fear that Green Line budget overruns
could siphon money from important projects elsewhere. But staff
officials have reassured them that with the possible exception of new
signal equipment, all other costs for the rehab are expected to come
in at or below estimates.

On another matter, the board approved the discontinuation of four
express bus routes between the Southwest Side and downtown and the
retention of two others.

All six were to have been phased out after the recent opening of
the Orange Line, which connects Midway
Airport with the Loop, but requests for continued express bus
service from riders who live west of the Orange Line's Midway
terminal caused officials to retain the No. 99 Stevenson Express and
the No. 164 Narragansett.